Rescue of the Bounty: Disaster and Survival in Superstorm Sandy by Michael J. Tougias, Douglas A. Campbell
Authors: Michael J. Tougias, Douglas A. Campbell
Ads: Link
house trailer, but while he was living aboard, he acquired a pet parrot. His boat was small. His parrot was smart. Walbridge wanted his ship to remain tidy, so he taught the parrot to go outside to relieve itself. This was a fatal error.
One day, Walbridge climbed his mast and was working up there with a scrub brush, Miller said. The bird, having learned its hygiene lesson, came outside. Walbridge lost his grip on the brush, which plummeted toward the deck. It reached the parrot first, Miller said, and there his bird tale ends.
In the off hours, Walbridge and Miller played chess. The former trucker dominated these contests, and when his time at the houseboat-rental business was over, Walbridge had allowed his boss to win precisely once. Miller chuckled at the memory.
In the late 1980s, the man who as a boy had no use for a classroom other than as a place to sleep began teaching adult-education classes in the area of Cedar Key, Florida. He took his lessons west along the coast to Apalachicola, Florida, where he offered night courses to commercial-fishing-boat captains. The idea was that when they earned a captain’s license, they could take paying customers aboard and increase their incomes.
Kristin Anderson, a Northerner, had come to Florida in 1985 to escape the cold. In Wisconsin, she had sailed on other people’s boats in the short sailing season. In Florida, she bought a used foam-and-plastic sailboat, got a life jacket and a bailing bucket, and, with a jug of drinking water, set out to learn to sail.
Someone challenged Anderson to take the captain’s course, and when she did, she discovered Robin Walbridge was an excellent teacher, who feasted on the success of his students. They became friends.
In 1990, when Anderson helped in an effort to bring the Governor Stone , a Gulf Coast schooner, to town, Walbridge became a volunteer captain. He moved to Apalachicola for a while, bought some houses, renovated them, and filled them with paying tenants.
“He’d blow into town once in a while and call on me,” Anderson recalled. On one visit, Walbridge took Anderson and another woman out on the Governor Stone . It was tied at the land end of a thousand-foot-long pier. Walbridge began teaching the women how to dock the boat. His teaching was deliberate. His explanations were clear. His voice was calm, never raised, and he almost never took the helm but stood back and pointed out the waving of a flag, the effect of the wind atop the masts.
“We spent the entire afternoon and we never got beyond the end of the pier,” Anderson recalled. “It was fantastic. He was such a good teacher.”
In 1993, Walbridge returned to Cedar Key as the skipper of the schooner New Way , a vessel operated by VisionQuest. The goal of the group, one newspaper reported at the time, was “to teach youngsters how to break out of a cycle of failure and become successful by taking risks and trying new activities.” The first lessons Walbridge taught were the names of all the lines on the New Way and how to tie mariner’s knots.
Later, Walbridge was skipper aboard the Heritage of Miami , an eighty-five-foot schooner used by the Boy Scouts of America in its High Adventure program. The boat sailed from Islamorada in the Florida Keys to the Dry Tortugas, seventy miles west of Key West, on weeklong tours every week.
Barbara Maggio, whose husband, Joe, was the well-known force behind the schooner, was amazed at what Walbridge accomplished each week. She was particularly impressed the week the son of Vermont’s first director of the state’s Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired took a group of blind Scouts sailing for an entire week.
Schooner sailing was fine, but like any tall ship enthusiast, Walbridge was looking forward toward the next, bigger vessel. He got his opportunity in 1993 when Joe Maggio told Richard Bailey, skipper of the square-rigged ship Rose , about Walbridge.
Bailey was a year younger than Walbridge, and the age
One day, Walbridge climbed his mast and was working up there with a scrub brush, Miller said. The bird, having learned its hygiene lesson, came outside. Walbridge lost his grip on the brush, which plummeted toward the deck. It reached the parrot first, Miller said, and there his bird tale ends.
In the off hours, Walbridge and Miller played chess. The former trucker dominated these contests, and when his time at the houseboat-rental business was over, Walbridge had allowed his boss to win precisely once. Miller chuckled at the memory.
In the late 1980s, the man who as a boy had no use for a classroom other than as a place to sleep began teaching adult-education classes in the area of Cedar Key, Florida. He took his lessons west along the coast to Apalachicola, Florida, where he offered night courses to commercial-fishing-boat captains. The idea was that when they earned a captain’s license, they could take paying customers aboard and increase their incomes.
Kristin Anderson, a Northerner, had come to Florida in 1985 to escape the cold. In Wisconsin, she had sailed on other people’s boats in the short sailing season. In Florida, she bought a used foam-and-plastic sailboat, got a life jacket and a bailing bucket, and, with a jug of drinking water, set out to learn to sail.
Someone challenged Anderson to take the captain’s course, and when she did, she discovered Robin Walbridge was an excellent teacher, who feasted on the success of his students. They became friends.
In 1990, when Anderson helped in an effort to bring the Governor Stone , a Gulf Coast schooner, to town, Walbridge became a volunteer captain. He moved to Apalachicola for a while, bought some houses, renovated them, and filled them with paying tenants.
“He’d blow into town once in a while and call on me,” Anderson recalled. On one visit, Walbridge took Anderson and another woman out on the Governor Stone . It was tied at the land end of a thousand-foot-long pier. Walbridge began teaching the women how to dock the boat. His teaching was deliberate. His explanations were clear. His voice was calm, never raised, and he almost never took the helm but stood back and pointed out the waving of a flag, the effect of the wind atop the masts.
“We spent the entire afternoon and we never got beyond the end of the pier,” Anderson recalled. “It was fantastic. He was such a good teacher.”
In 1993, Walbridge returned to Cedar Key as the skipper of the schooner New Way , a vessel operated by VisionQuest. The goal of the group, one newspaper reported at the time, was “to teach youngsters how to break out of a cycle of failure and become successful by taking risks and trying new activities.” The first lessons Walbridge taught were the names of all the lines on the New Way and how to tie mariner’s knots.
Later, Walbridge was skipper aboard the Heritage of Miami , an eighty-five-foot schooner used by the Boy Scouts of America in its High Adventure program. The boat sailed from Islamorada in the Florida Keys to the Dry Tortugas, seventy miles west of Key West, on weeklong tours every week.
Barbara Maggio, whose husband, Joe, was the well-known force behind the schooner, was amazed at what Walbridge accomplished each week. She was particularly impressed the week the son of Vermont’s first director of the state’s Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired took a group of blind Scouts sailing for an entire week.
Schooner sailing was fine, but like any tall ship enthusiast, Walbridge was looking forward toward the next, bigger vessel. He got his opportunity in 1993 when Joe Maggio told Richard Bailey, skipper of the square-rigged ship Rose , about Walbridge.
Bailey was a year younger than Walbridge, and the age
Similar Books
